First Gravedigger Read online

  But I wasn’t finished. “If nothing really matters to you, why should you balk at the idea of killing?”

  “But, but this is different!”

  “How is it different, Charlie? You did say nothing matters, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but hell—”

  “Or were you just playing games?”

  “Earl!”

  “Trying to get your old buddy to feel sorry for you? Was that it? Was that it, Charlie?”

  “No, no, I meant it. I—”

  “Then prove it! Do this for me.”

  “Ah, Earl, don’t put it like that!”

  “Then think of it as a deal. I’ll get a gun for you if you’ll get Speer for me. That’s fair, isn’t it? Speer means nothing to you—you don’t even know the man. But you know me—I’m your friend. At least, I thought I was your friend. Am I your friend, Charlie?”

  “Sure you are, Earl. You know that.”

  “I’ve been your friend for over twenty years. Doesn’t that matter either?”

  Charlie looked ready to be carried out with the garbage.

  “Doesn’t that matter either, Charlie?” I persisted. “It does to me. Where else could you have gone last night? Do you know anybody else in the world who would have let you in?” He started crying again. “Even when you told me the mob was after you—did I kick you out? Did I?”

  He ran his sleeve under his nose and shook his head.

  “Charlie, did it even occur to you that you might be putting me in danger by coming here? Of course not. But it occurred to me—damn right it occurred to me. But I still didn’t kick you out. You’re here right now. Who else would do that for you? Who, Charlie?”

  He lifted his awe-stricken face. “Nobody, Earl. You’re the only one.”

  Once he understood that, I was halfway home. I kept hammering at him and hammering at him, and by the time the clock said 8 A.M., he had agreed to kill Amos Speer.

  Charlie Bates was my long-distance weapon, my bomb. I’d primed him and put him on automatic timer. When the time came he’d self-destruct, and I’d be free of both Charlie and Amos Speer forever.

  I drove Charlie to Highland Park and told him to go look at the yaks in the zoo. I’d meet him there as soon as I got the gun.

  Good old Charlie Bates. All the time I kept telling myself I was crazy trying to get Charlie the loser to solve my problems for me. But an opportunity like this didn’t come along every day. And I was running out of time.

  The plan was simple. Charlie would take a cab to Speer’s home, go around back to the garden, shoot Speer, and then shoot himself. Victim, murderer, murder weapon, all right there together in one neat little package. The cops would find out the murder weapon belonged to the victim and wonder how Charlie got hold of it. And there wouldn’t be any clear motive for the killing, of course. But so many motiveless crimes are committed these days I was counting on the cops’ thinking Charlie was just one more crazy in a world of crazies. I didn’t let myself think of what would happen if Amos Speer decided he didn’t want to get his hands dirty digging in the ground today. But whatever happened, I’d better establish an alibi for myself.

  I drove to Speer Galleries and checked in with the guard at the door. The galleries used a combination of men, dogs, and computer-controlled electronics that made a break-in impossible, we’d been assured. (The insurance companies were satisfied.) I stood chatting with the guard for a minute so he’d remember me; I didn’t want to depend on his written records alone.

  I was just opening my office door when I heard a nasal voice say, “What’s this? Another long-distance runner on the Speer treadmill?”

  “Hello, Wightman.”

  “You surprise me, dear boy, you really do. Working on a Saturday. Even though Alice Ballard no longer sits upon your narrow shoulders. Such selfless devotion to labor is not a trait I’d have expected to find in your so-called character. Especially when the boss isn’t here.”

  I didn’t let myself rise to the bait. “Just a few odds and ends I want to get cleared up before Monday. But what about you? I thought weekends were your time to howl.”

  “And they are, O keen-eyed one, they are! Except that this weekend my fellow howler decided she really must go home to visit her sick mother—a story so patently flimsy I’ve already forgotten the poor girl’s phone number. Now she’ll never know what she’s missed. I weep for her.”

  “Well, better luck next time.”

  “Never fear. Resilience is my middle name. Some of us are born to survive, don’t you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Well, I’d better get at it if I want to get finished today.”

  “Ta-ta. Don’t strain yourself, dear boy.”

  That was a stroke of luck, running into Wightman—much better than depending on the guard’s records alone. Wightman was the perfect alibi. No one would ever suspect him of lying to protect me.

  I waited until Wightman was in his own office, right down the hall from mine. Then I moved cautiously toward Speer’s office, some distance away—peering around corners to make sure no guard or dog was patrolling nearby. I went through June Murray’s office into the inner sanctum and headed straight for Speer’s desk.

  I put on gloves before I got to work. I had to break the lock to get the drawer open, but I was able to do it without marring the wood. The gun was in a chamois bag, a .38 automatic with a full clip. I would have preferred a revolver. If the automatic jammed, Charlie Bates was fully capable of blurting out that his old buddy Earl had foisted a bad gun off on him.

  I slipped the automatic into my pocket and left Speer’s office. I made a point of making noise as I passed Wightman’s closed door. He was quick to investigate.

  And gloat. “Leaving? You must have been here all of fifteen minutes. Sure you aren’t overdoing it?”

  The man had all the subtlety of a boa constrictor. “Pull in your fangs,” I said. “Forgot something. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Of cooouuurrrse you will,” he crooned, and shut his door.

  I told the guard the same story when I checked out, and then drove back to Highland Park. I found a place to leave the car and walked through the zoo, only half believing Charlie would still be waiting at the yak pens. But there he was, locked in eye contact with a great shaggy beast that was finding Charlie Bates an interesting specimen indeed. I had to slap Charlie on the shoulder to get his attention.

  Instantly the yak was forgotten. “You got it?”

  “I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

  In the car I made Charlie repeat Amos Speer’s address to make sure he still remembered it. Then I handed him the automatic.

  But Charlie had had too much time alone with the yaks: he was having second thoughts. “Earl, I don’t know about this.”

  “You know, in a way I envy you,” I said quickly. “You’re taking decisive action to end an intolerable situation. Not many people have the guts to do that.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “But at the same time—look, Charlie, why don’t you take a week to think it over? You might change your mind.”

  “Uh.”

  “In a week you might think of another way to solve your problems. Who knows? You might find a way to pay off your debts. You might even score big. Maybe your wife will come back to you. Anything’s possible.”

  “None of that’ll happen.”

  “Miracles have happened before—”

  “Not to me, they haven’t.”

  “But maybe your luck’s due to change. You might even win a new car on a quiz show—”

  “Ha! Fat chance.”

  “You don’t know, Charlie, you might—”

  “Earl. You promised you wouldn’t try’n stop me.”

  I let a long pause develop as I pretended to think about it. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? All right, Charlie, I’ll keep my word. I won’t try to talk you out of it. Tell me Speer’s address again.”

  He repeated it obediently. By now his death and Sp
eer’s were so linked in his mind that one presupposed the other. I drove him to a taxi stand on Bellefonte Street and handed him enough cash to pay the driver. He closed the car door and then stuck his head through the window.

  “You’re a real friend, Earl—the only friend I ever had.” He stuck out his hand. “Goodbye, Earl.”

  I shook his hand. “Goodbye, Charlie.”

  He climbed into a cab. I watched his sad face looking at me through the rear window until the cab pulled around a corner and out of sight.

  I risked a traffic ticket getting back to the gallery in a hurry. The guard wrote down 11:09 when I checked in. I banged on Wightman’s door as I passed. “I’m back, you asshole!” A muted whinny answered me.

  Then I settled down in my office to wait, hoping Wightman wouldn’t be leaving soon. I got my wish. I sat there and twiddled my thumbs for six hours. About two o’clock my stomach started growling, but Wightman was either skipping lunch or he’d brought a sandwich with him. Another problem: lack of sleep was catching up with me, but I didn’t dare let myself nod off. At a little before five I finally heard Wightman’s door. I caught up with him and we checked out together. The same guard was at the door; now I had two witnesses to say I’d been at the gallery from eleven to five. I thought briefly of asking Wightman to have a drink with me to prolong the alibi but decided against it. That would have been so out of character it was bound to make him suspicious.

  I stopped at a deli for something I could take with me and headed straight for the Broadmoor; I didn’t want to miss the six-thirty news. I was starting my second Reuben when it came on. A sincere young woman gazed earnestly into the camera lens and intoned funereally:

  Good evening. It’s time for KOJW Newswatch. Our top story tonight is a murder in Fox Chapel. Amos Speer, owner of the world-renowned Speer Galleries, was found dead in his Fox Chapel home at three o’clock this afternoon.

  Wait a minute—in his home? Inside the house? The picture changed to show Speer’s house and grounds. Then a series of confused shots of police moving around, an ambulance parked by the front entrance, two men carrying something out on a stretcher. Out. Out from the house.

  Police say the cause of death was a thirty-eight caliber bullet in Speer’s right temple. The body was discovered by the victim’s widow, Mrs. Nedda Speer, upon her return from the Allegheny Racquet Club in North Hills. KOJW talked to Mrs. Speer.

  The grieving widow was still wearing her tennis costume, and she looked like a million bucks. Which was about what she’d cost: Nedda Speer was a good forty years younger than her husband. A man with Harpo Marx hair was interviewing her:

  HARPO:

  Mrs. Speer, do you have any idea why your husband was shot?

  NEDDA:

  Why, ah, ah, a prowler?

  HARPO:

  The police say nothing was taken.

  NEDDA:

  I don’t think anything was taken. He must have been frightened off.

  HARPO:

  Can you think of anyone who’d want to kill your husband?

  NEDDA:

  Please leave me alone.

  Shot of widow striding catlike away from camera. Back to sincere young woman in studio.

  News of Amos Speer’s death is expected to rock the antiques world. Speer established the headquarters of his antiques empire in Pittsburgh in 1948. Speer Galleries has branches in San Francisco, London, Munich, and Rome. Speer was seventy-five years old at the time of his death.

  He was seventy-two. They never got things like that right.

  Police say the murder weapon has not been found. In spite of Mrs. Speer’s belief that her husband was shot by a prowler, police are looking into the possibility that Speer’s death is the work of a hired killer. We’ll be back after this message.

  Well, wasn’t that just wonderful. And where was Charlie Bates? There were supposed to be two bodies there, remember. Two bodies and the murder weapon. Instead there was one body, no murder weapon, and one very large mystery to be investigated and investigated and investigated and investigated.

  Good old Charlie. Good old reliable Charlie. There was one thing about Charlie you could always depend on: If there was any way at all to screw something up, you could always count on Charlie to find it. And I’d set it up—me, Earl Sommers. Temporary insanity, that must be it. I must have been totally out of my mind to trust the matter of my very survival to good old Charlie Bates.

  CHAPTER 4

  A man shouldn’t go around saying he’s going to kill himself if he doesn’t mean it. It distresses his friends, disappoints his enemies, and disconcerts the statistics-keepers. It also has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into other people’s plans.

  The television blithered away while I sat there alternating between cloud-nine ecstasy and snake-pit panic. Amos Speer was dead; that was the main thing. I could show up at the gallery Monday morning and go on as if Speer had never had me walking the plank at all. My aborted attempt to buy the Duprée chair for myself would not come to light, no tall man in a blue uniform would be reading me my rights, and my reputation in the antiques world would shine as pristine as ever. A definite plus, I’d say.

  But then there was the other side of the ledger. Where the hell was Charlie Bates? What had happened? Charlie had pulled off the main stunt, which was getting Speer off my back. But then what? Had he looked at the blood flowing out of Amos Speer’s right temple and thought Ugh, there’s got to be a better way to go than that? Yep, it could have happened just that way. So then what? Had he just taken off to give himself time to reconsider?

  And why was the body in the house? In the garden, I’d told Charlie. Maybe Speer had broken his usual pattern and skipped his Saturday session in the garden for once, but I found it hard to believe that Charlie would go into the house looking for him—even if the security alarm was turned off. It was a minor thing, but it bothered me.

  The major thing, of course, was Charlie’s whereabouts. If he’d just gone someplace else to finish the job—either with the gun or another way—then I could relax. But if he was wandering around out there somewhere, I could never relax. Not ever. He might be working that flabby mouth of his anyplace and god knows who’d be listening; Charlie just never knew when to shut up. Or he might show up on my doorstep again, whining Earl, you’re the only friend, etc. He’d expect me to hide him, take care of him. Wear him like an albatross. And I’d have to do it, too.

  I switched over to another channel that had a seven-thirty news program. It was mostly a repeat of what I’d already heard, the only additional information being that Mrs. Speer had said her husband was working in the garden when she left for her tennis lesson. Curiouser and curiouser. I turned off the set and reached for the phone.

  Nedda Speer answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi, doll.”

  “Earl. I was wondering when you’d call.”

  “Just now heard the news. Poor Amos.”

  “Yes.”

  “They don’t know who did it—or why?”

  “No, not a clue. It must have been a prowler.”

  “Guess so. But it’s weird.”

  “Isn’t it? A murder! Right here in this house.”

  “You holding up okay?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “Listen, babe, one thing I want to know.”

  “Ask.”

  “How long a mourning period?”

  “Oh, I think two months should be enough.”

  “Two months, right. Want to meet tonight?”

  “I don’t think I’d better leave the house for a few days. I’m getting a lot of sympathy visits.”

  “Call me when they stop.”

  “That I will.” A door chime sounded in the background. “There’s somebody now. Bye, lover, I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  So that part of it was okay. Oh yes, that was another little thing I had going for me. I don’t show all my hand at once. Nedda Speer thought I was hot stuff and I’d been damned careful not to do any
thing to make her change her mind. I didn’t know which I enjoyed most—screwing Amos Speer out of valuable pieces of furniture or screwing his wife. Same kind of good feeling in both.

  I didn’t think Nedda would be too broken up by the death of her elderly husband. She’d long since decided Amos Speer was not the most exciting man on earth, so she’d gone shopping and she’d found me. Lately Nedda had been making it clear she’d much rather have me than creaky old Amos Speer living with her in the big house in Fox Chapel. That’s why I’d asked her how long she intended to observe the forms of mourning. I hadn’t even had to propose.

  See what that meant? If Nedda didn’t change her mind, I’d end up running Speer Galleries after all. Without having to put up one red cent. It was my ace in the hole, and it looked as if I was going to get to play it.

  But Nedda could change her mind; that was the danger. She wasn’t a very predictable woman. Sometimes Nedda made me uneasy; and sometimes she made me feel like king of the jungle. She had a pantherlike way of stalking me whenever she was in the mood that I found exciting as hell. I’d been going to bed with the lady for over three months but I still didn’t feel as if I had a fix on her. I saw what she allowed me to see. And one thing Nedda allowed me to see was that she liked getting her own way; she may have wanted to marry me only because she knew she couldn’t. But now that there was no obstacle in the way, she might well lose interest. She might look elsewhere for suitable marriage fodder, or she might decide not to marry at all. I was going to have to play this one very carefully; Nedda Speer was an opportunity I couldn’t let get away. If I handled it right, I’d have it all.

  Even the Duprée chair.

  Monday morning everyone was walking around in a trance. They’d had all day Sunday to absorb the fact that their fearless leader was no longer with them, and now they were beginning to wonder what that meant in terms of their own lives. Robin Coulter, for instance, glared at me with open dislike. Without Amos Speer to say go, she was wondering if she’d still be attending the Mercer auction next month.